This invention relates to the reduction and removal of oxides from the surface of metal. The metal containing surface oxides is passed into or through an enclosure, continuously, intermittently, or batchwise, in which it is heated and contacted with reducing gas.
Newly formed metal strip, rod, and the like tends to develop oxides on its surface which must be removed before further processing. In the steel industry, this oxide layer is called mill scale. Mill scale is almost universally removed by acid pickling. Copper and other metals also require treatment for the removal of oxide scale.
Hydrogen and other reducing gases such as carbon monoxide have been used for the reduction of oxides in ores, where they are substantially consumed within a reducing furnace or vessel. Hydrogen is readily burned and can cause explosions under certain circumstances, and carbon monoxide is poisonous and generally considered dangerous unless confined and reacted in a vessel of the type generally contemplated in ore reduction. Moreover, steel strip and many other metal products made continuously move at a rapid pace, increasing the difficulty of conducting the oxide removal process with gases within the time constraints normally imposed. Thus, while the elementary chemical principles of oxide removal and/or reduction by reducing gases are known, an acceptable continuous surface oxide reduction system employing reducing gases has not been forthcoming in the art.
Our process and apparatus provide for three stages or zones for the processing of the moving metal, which may be any metal having oxide on its surface, in any commercially common shape, such as strip or rod. The three basic stages are heating, reducing, and cooling. All three steps take place within an enclosure of the type to be described in more detail below, and under the conditions to be described in more detail below. Heating in the heating zone is accomplished by a combination of a heating element or device to be described below and post-combustion of unreacted reducing gas. Reduction of the oxide scale in the reduction zone is accomplished by assuring a turbulent and/or vigorous application of reducing gas to the surface of the metal, preferably in the presence of elemental carbon; cooling of the metal in the cooling zone prior to its exit from the enclosure is accomplished by the introduction of inert gas along with the unheated reducing gas to contact the reduced surface of the metal just prior to its exit from the enclosure. The metal surface should preferably be cooled to a temperature at which reoxidation is unlikely to occur; in the case of steel strip, this is 500xc2x0 F. or lower.